The #internet was ‘too expensive’ too . Every new infrastructure platform can look uneconomic at first. Early systems are often bespoke, supply chains immature and scaling doesn’t yet exist. The result: cost structures can appear daunting, if not irrational, when judged by the standards of those more traditional models.

#WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force plans to add 2,800 active-duty personnel and 2,000 civilian employees in fiscal year 2027 as it looks to nearly double the size of the service by the end of the decade, the service’s top officer told lawmakers this week.

Gen. Chance #Saltzman, chief of space operations, said the personnel increase is intended to put the service on a path from roughly 10,000 active-duty Guardians today to about 20,000 by 2030.

The expansion comes as the #Pentagon sharply increases spending on military space programs, including missile defense satellites, launch systems, cyber protection and communications networks.

During Department of the Air Force posture hearings this week before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, lawmakers broadly backed the Space Force’s proposed fiscal 2027 budget of about $71 billion, more than double the enacted 2026 level. Some legislators questioned whether the personnel buildup could move even faster.

Saltzman said the service’s growth rate is constrained by training capacity and the pace at which new operational units can be established.

“We can’t bring them all on at once, because our training pipeline has to be able to support that, and quite frankly, the squadrons that we need to stand up aren’t ready yet,” Saltzman told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“So it’s about synchronizing it all over the next four or five years,” he said.

Despite taking on responsibilities including missile warning, satellite operations, launch oversight and space domain awareness — the monitoring of objects and threats in orbit — the service has remained comparatively small.

Saltzman said growing mission demands are now forcing the service to expand more rapidly.

“The new missions that have been given to the Space Force are going to require something on the order of about 40 new squadrons,” he said. “That represents an increase of about 2800 guardians and another 2,000 civilians, just to do the work of the new missions being added to address threats and continue to provide the support to the joint force.”

Many of the new positions are expected to focus on technical specialties including cyber operations, engineering, intelligence, acquisitions and satellite operations.

Saltzman also tied the increase to the Space Force’s growing emphasis on “space control,” a term used to describe protecting U.S. satellites and countering adversary systems if necessary. The Pentagon’s 2027 budget proposal includes large increases for missile-tracking satellite networks, military communications systems and launch infrastructure.

He said procurement growth alone would require the creation of 10 additional program offices to oversee acquisitions and deliver new systems into operation.

The civilian hiring push comes after the service lost nearly 14% of its civilian workforce in 2025 during Pentagon-wide personnel reductions tied to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative. Space Force officials said roughly 780 civilian employees departed, affecting areas including acquisitions and contracting where the military relies heavily on technical civilian expertise.

To compete for specialized talent, the Space Force is also considering broader use of “direct commissioning” authorities, which would allow experienced cyber and technical professionals to enter military service at higher officer ranks rather than beginning at entry-level positions — similarly to how physicians enter the military medical corps as captains, majors or lieutenant colonels.

“Cyber is critical,” he said. “In fact, it’s indistinguishable from space operations. If you can’t control the networks that distribute the data, you can’t do the space missions.”

The service is expanding internal training pipelines while also recruiting from the private sector, Saltzman said.

“So if you join the Space Force, and you have cyber credibility … we might bring you in as a captain or a major.”

#SpaceX delayed a critical test of its massive Starship rocket on Thursday after troubleshooting various problems just before liftoff. Ground equipment problem scrubs #Starship launch attempt

#SpaceX reveals plans for what could be the biggest-ever initial public offering. NEW YORK — Elon Musk announced plans Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever by taking public a space company that is currently losing billions of dollars year.

A filing shows that his SpaceX lost US$2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too.

The prospectus did not put a dollar figure on the amount Musk hopes to raise, but various reports have put it at $75 billion or so. An offering of that size would easily surpass the current title holder, Saudi Aramco, the oil giant that went public seven years ago and raised $26 billion.

SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has said the money will help finance projects to put people on the moon and Mars in its quest to make humans an intergalactic species as they face existential threats that could wipe out civilization.

“We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs,” the filing states.

The prospectus reads in part like a Hollywood fantasy version of the future, detailing in one section how part of Musk’s compensation will be granted only if he maintains “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”

Short of that, the stock sale alone could make Musk, a major owner who founded SpaceX in 2002, the world’s first trillionaire. Forbes currently puts his net worth at $839 billion.

In addition to making reusable rockets to hurl astronauts into orbit, SpaceX has other businesses, some successful, some struggling — and with plenty of questions marks.

The document shows that Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company, is a big source of cash for the company, generating $4.4 billion in operating income last year. The business uses 10,000 satellites in low orbit to provide internet service to 10 million people in 150 countries and territories.

Among the struggling businesses are two Musk units that were recently acquired by SpaceX — his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and his artificial intelligence business, xAI. Those purchases were blasted by some SpaceX investors as bailouts because they are big money losers.

An #asteroid discovered days ago will narrowly miss Earth. An asteroid roughly the size of one to two school buses will fly by Earth Monday, coming as close as 91,593 kilometres (56,913 miles), according to the European Space Agency — equivalent to about one quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon.

Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Tucson, Arizona, discovered the asteroid on May 10 and named it 2026JH2. The object belongs to a class of asteroids called Apollo, which orbit the sun on trajectories that intersect with Earth’s own orbit around the sun.

At its closest pass, 2026JH2 will be about 24 per cent of the average distance between Earth and the moon, and about two and a half times the distance at which hundreds of geosynchronous satellites orbit, providing services such as telecommunications and weather forecasts. The close pass is expected to occur on Monday just before 6 p.m. ET, according to NASA’s JPL Small-Body Database.

Despite the proximity, the space rock poses no danger, according to Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the inventor of the Torino Scale, a tool for categorizing potential collisions of space objects with Earth.

“2026JH2 will pass safely by the Earth,” he said in an email. “This is actually a rather normal occurrence, car-sized objects pass between the Earth and the Moon every week. At the size of a school bus, these pass through our neighbourhood several times per year. We are only recently developing surveys that are sensitive enough to see them,” he added, noting that before these surveys, objects of this kind would simply zoom by completely unnoticed.
Exact size unknown

The asteroid originates from the asteroid belt, an area between Mars and Jupiter, Binzel explained. “Occasional collisions in the asteroid belt, plus gravitational tugs by Jupiter, can send small asteroids into Earth’s vicinity. This fact has been known for many decades and many thousands of asteroids that can pass near the Earth are already known.”

Even though astronomers have directly observed the object hurtling toward Earth, its exact size is unknown. The uncertainty is due to the fact that when an optical telescope sees a new object, the only information it gathers is the object’s luminosity in visible light. There is no way to know how much light the object absorbs or reflects, according to Patrick Michel, an astrophysicist and director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France.

“Thus, at the same luminosity, an object can be bigger and darker, or smaller and more reflective,” he said in an email. “To know the size, we would need observations in the infrared, because the luminosity in the infrared is directly proportional to the size. But such observations are more difficult to do from the Earth and are not used to discover new objects.”

Based on assumptions about how much light is reflected, 2026JH2 is currently estimated to be between 15 and 30 metres (50 and 100 feet) in diametre. At the smaller end of that range, Michel said, it would be similar in size to a bolide, or fireball, that exploded in the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, shattering windows and injuring 1,000 people. At the highest end of the range, it would be closer in size to an object that exploded near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia in 1908, which pulverized large swaths of forest. Unlike both of these objects, however, 2026JH2 will not even enter the atmosphere, so there is no risk it will explode.

Although the distance at which the asteroid will pass seems very close, it is still “far enough that there is absolutely nothing to worry about,” Michel said. But he noted that predicting 2026JH2’s future trajectory is difficult, and we can’t rule out that it might eventually be on a collision course with Earth. “The good news is that so far, no asteroid that we know of poses a risk for the timescale of our predictions, which is about a century on average,” he added.
Waiting for Apophis

An object at least 10 times bigger than 2026JH2, called Apophis, will pass much closer to Earth, at a projected 32,000 kilometres (20,000 miles), on April 13, 2029, “Yet, we are not worried at all, and on the contrary very excited,” Michel said. “Such a close approach of such a big object occurs only once in a few thousands of years and its light will even be visible with the naked eye in the night sky across Europe, Africa and part of the middle East.”

By contrast, during its closest approach, 2026JH2 will only be detectable with small telescopes at dark sites, but it will remain 100 times too faint to be seen by the human eye, according to Jean-Luc Margot, a professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Part of the reason we don’t have more detailed information about the asteroid, he added in an email, is that our planetary radar capabilities are currently degraded. “The Arecibo telescope collapsed in 2020 and NASA’s Goldstone antenna is down for major repairs for an extended period of time. Without radar data, we are less capable of assessing the impact risk and we are more vulnerable to the impact hazard.”

A partial livestream of the close pass will be provided by the Virtual Telescope Project using telescopes in Italy, starting at 3:45 p.m. ET, and lasting until the object is no longer visible from that location.

So far, astronomers have observed only about 1 per cent of the near-Earth asteroids in the same size range as 2026JH2, Margot said, and therefore “it’s not surprising that this object was discovered only a few days before its closest approach to Earth, when it became bright enough to be picked up by asteroid detection surveys.”

He added that it’s concerning that we do not have complete knowledge about the population of near-Earth objects but noted that space agencies are now actively funding discovery surveys to improve our inventory of potentially hazardous asteroids.

Jacopo Prisco, CNN

Does it matter who gets to the moon first? Artemis II crew says ‘it does’. One month after #NASA’s Artemis II crew completed its historic mission around the moon, members of the team are acknowledging a 21st century space race between the United States and China, saying “it does” matter who gets to the moon first.

Back in April, the Artemis II crew successfully completed a 10-day mission to fly around the moon, marking NASA’s first crewed lunar flyby in 50 years. The mission also carried astronauts farther from Earth than any humans before them.

The crew included Canadian astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, and American astronauts: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch.

Speaking to CTV Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an interview airing Sunday, Koch said there is “absolutely” a race between the two countries for benefits.

“I think that the benefits that we get from going to the moon are apparent to many, many countries,” Koch said. “And that’s why the question that I think our countries face isn’t to go or not to go, but should we lead or should we follow?”

Asked by Kapelos if it matters who gets to the moon first, Koch said, “I would say it does.”

“Oftentimes, the people that pursue something great first, they get to set the standards. They get to pave the way. They get to set the rules,” Koch added.

First established in 2017, NASA’s Artemis program has experienced delays, but plans continue for its first crewed lunar landing by 2028. The program has a broader goal of establishing a long-term presence on the moon, and ultimately, future missions to Mars.

China, meanwhile, is aiming to land its first astronauts on the moon by 2030. China has gone to the moon multiple times, but exclusively with uncrewed spacecraft.

When asked if the U.S. and China are in a space race, Glover said he agreed with Koch’s assessment and pointed to the NASA-led Artemis Accords – a non-binding set of international principles designed to guide civil space exploration. Currently, more than 60 countries have signed the accords, including Canada.

“I say this a lot. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” Glover said. “We’re willing to do this as a coalition and that’s harder because you got to get everybody to agree and to buy in.”
Will Canada and the U.S. continue to collaborate in space?

One of Canada’s most notable contributions to space exploration is the creation of the Canadarm.

The Canadarm is a robotic arm that made its debut in 1981 – first launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia – and was used to support U.S. space missions for three decades. In total, five Canadarms were built and delivered to NASA with the program ending in 2011.

The Canadian Space Agency, meanwhile, had been recently working to provide hardware – including a $1-billion-plus AI-enabled robotic arm – for NASA’s orbiting space station around the moon, known as Gateway. But in March, NASA announced it’s pivoting away from the plan, leaving Canada’s contribution to the lunar program up in the air.

Asked by Kapelos whether that decision threatens collaboration between the two countries, Hansen said, “it doesn’t” and insisted NASA is looking for “partners who bring real value.”

“This is all opportunity, but it’s not going to fall in our lap. We have to be very intentional,” Hansen said.

“Good news Canada, (we) got a lot of value to give. We just really have to make some decisions,” Hansen added. “There’s some short-term decisions and some long-term strategy that we need to just look at, make some decisions and get after it. I have no fear.”

The moment comes amid strained relations between Canada and the U.S. in large part due to trade tensions.

When asked about having a Canadian represented on the Artemis mission, Wiseman said it was the “utmost importance” to have Hansen as part of the team.

“We could have gone alone as the United States of America, but we made room for others to share their gifts,” Wiseman said.

Wiseman also highlighted how Canada will be needed in the space race.

“We need the brilliance of this nation to come forward and help us build a sustainable presence on the moon. We are in a race, and we aren’t going for a one off. We are going because this is the next step in human civilization, and we are going to do that together,” Wiseman said.

You can watch the Artemis II crew’s full interview on CTV Question Period Sunday at 11 a.m. ET.

#Europeans are piling into space stocks, and one standout winner is the fund Seraphim Space Investment Trust after its stock quadrupled in price

#WASHINGTON — #Lunar Outpost, a developer of lunar rovers, has raised $30 million as it works to revamp designs to meet #NASA’s revised Artemis #architecture.

Rocket Lab announces large launch contract and plans to acquire #space #robotics company